Posts Tagged ‘FTC’
This Independence Day: Is Your Organic Hamburger Up to Snuff?
Just in time for holiday cookouts, the Washington Post has a story about uproar over watering down the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s organic label.
It chronicles questions about the purity of the USDA Organic stamp that can be found on everything from t-shirts, cosmetics and pet food to the hamburgers and corn on the cob enjoyed at the typical All-American Independence Day bash. The Post story inquires: Has the country's preeminent organic label become tainted by the influences of factory farmers and food processing giants? Do products bearing the stamp no longer meet national standards?
Pressing as those questions may be they are hardly the only controversies surrounding “healthy” and “green” claims used to sell products that have swept into our supermarkets and discount stores in the last couple of years.
TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm, has published a review of 2,219 consumer product claims. It found that 98 percent of the items had false or misleading advertisements on their labels.
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Scam City! Grifters – and Consumer Protection – Are on the Rise, Officials Say
The economy might be in the dumps but it’s turning into a stellar year for consumer scams … and government plans to combat them.
First, this just came in from one of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Yahoo groups: Beware of the telephone shysters posing as sales reps for the FBI. No, silly! Not the real Federal Bureau of Investigation. This one's an alleged alarm company peddling “free” security systems. The pitch starts off saying "you live in a high crime statistics area" and offers a free home alarm system in exchange for letting the company put an FBI sign on your lawn. It’s the latest twist in alarm system scams.
AFTER THE JUMP: More on D.C. confidence schemes and Obama's plans to take down abusive consumer lenders.
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Alcohol + Caffeine = No-No, FTC Says
Sorry to break this news: But it turns out that mixing caffeine and alcohol may not the best way to party all night and get up for work the next morning, chipper as ever.
The maker of the caffeinated schnapps Wide Eye has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its advertisements were “deceptive, unsubstantiated, and in violation of federal law.”
